by Daniel Cole
He had been in hundreds of identical lifts in his time: a seam- less metal box, installed by councils all over the country. It had no floor covering, no mirrors and no protruding lights or fixtures. There was absolutely nothing for the underprivileged residents to destroy or steal from their own life-enriching piece of equipment, so they had settled for spray-painting obscenities all over the walls instead. Wolf only had time to learn that Johnny Ratcliff was both ‘ere’ and ‘a gay’ before the doors scraped open at the fourth floor.
Over a dozen people were scattered along the silent corridor. Most looked a little shaken and eyed Wolf’s outfit disapprovingly, except for one scruffy man wearing a forensics badge, who nodded in approval and gave him a thumbs up as he passed. A very faint but familiar smell intensified as Wolf approached the open doorway at the end of the hallway. It was the unmistakable smell of death. People who work around such things quickly become attuned to the unique mix of stale air, shit, piss and putrefying flesh.
Wolf took a step back from the door when he heard running footsteps from inside. A young woman burst out through the open doorway, dropped to her knees and then vomited in the corridor in front of him. He waited politely for an opportune moment to ask her to move when another set of footsteps approached. He instinctively took another step back before Detective Sergeant Emily Baxter came skidding into the corridor.
‘Wolf! I thought I saw you lurking out here,’ she roared across the hushed hallway. ‘Seriously, how cool is this?’
She glanced down at the woman retching on the floor between them.
‘Could you puke somewhere else, please?’
The woman sheepishly crawled out of their way. Baxter grabbed Wolf by the arm and excitedly led him into the apartment. Nearly a decade his junior, Baxter was almost as tall as him. Her dark brown hair turned black under the gloom of the unimpressive entrance hall and, as always, she wore dark make-up that made her attractive eyes appear abnormally large. Dressed in a fitted shirt and smart trousers, she looked him up and down with a mischievous grin.
‘No one told me it was a mufti day.’
Wolf refused to rise to the bait, knowing that she would quickly lose interest if he only remained quiet.
‘How pissed is Chambers gonna be he’s missed this?’ she beamed.
‘Personally I’d take the Caribbean cruise over a dead body too,’ said Wolf, bored.
Baxter’s huge eyes widened in surprise: ‘Simmons didn’t tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
She led him through the crowded apartment, which had been dimly lit in the glow of a dozen strategically placed torches. Although not overpowering, the smell grew steadily stronger. Wolf could tell that the fetid source was close by because of the number of flies zipping about feverishly above his head.
The flat had high ceilings, contained no furniture, and was considerably larger than Wolf’s own, but was no more pleasant. The yellowed walls were peppered with holes through which the antiquated wiring and dusty insulation bled freely onto the bare floor. Neither the bathroom suite nor the kitchen looked to have been updated since the 1960s.
‘Tell me what?’ he asked her again.
‘This is the one, Wolf,’ said Baxter, ignoring the question, ‘a once-in-a-career case.’
Wolf was distracted, mentally sizing up the second bedroom and wondering whether he was being overcharged for his poxy box of a flat across the road. They rounded the corner into the crowded main room and he automatically scanned the floor, between the assorted equipment and pairs of legs, for a body.
‘Baxter!’
She stopped and turned to him impatiently.
‘What didn’t Simmons tell me?’
Behind her, a group of people, standing in front of the large floor-to-ceiling window that dominated the room, moved aside. Before she could answer, Wolf had stumbled away, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above them: the one light source that the police had not brought with them: a spotlight on a dark stage …
The naked body, contorted into an unnatural pose, appeared to be floating a foot above the uneven floorboards. It had its back to the room, looking out through the enormous window. Hundreds of almost invisible threads held the figure in place, which, in turn, were anchored by two industrial metal hooks.
It took Wolf a moment to identify the most unnerving feature of the surreal scene before him: the black leg attached to the white torso. Unable to comprehend what he was seeing, he pushed his way further into the room. As he drew closer, he noticed the huge stitches binding the mismatched body parts together, the skin tented where the material punctured through: one black male leg, one white; a large male hand on one side, a tanned female coun- terpart on the other; tangled jet-black hair hanging unsettlingly over a pale, freckled, slender, female torso.
Baxter was back at his side, clearly relishing the look of revul- sion on his face:
‘He didn’t tell you … One dead body - six victims!’ she whis- pered gleefully in his ear.
Wolf’s gaze dropped to the floor. He was standing on the shadow cast by the grotesque corpse and, in this simplified state, the proportions appeared even more jarring, gaps of light distorting the joins between the limbs and body.
‘What the hell are the press doing out there already?’ Wolf heard his chief shout at no one in particular. ‘I swear, this department has got more leaks than the Titanic. If I find anyone talking to them, they’ll be suspended!’
Wolf smiled, knowing full well that Simmons was only play- acting the part of the stereotypical boss. They had known one another for over a decade and, until the Khalid incident, Wolf had considered him a friend. Beneath the forced bravado, Simmons was in fact an intelligent, caring, and competent police officer.
‘Fawkes!’ Simmons strode over to them. He often struggled not to address his staff by their nicknames. He was almost a foot shorter than Wolf, was now in his fifties, and had developed a managerial belly. ‘Nobody told me it was a mufti day.’
Wolf heard Baxter snigger. He decided to adopt the same tactic that he had used on her by ignoring the comment. After an uncom- fortable silence, Simmons turned to Baxter.
‘Where’s Adams?’ he asked.
‘Who?’
‘Adams. Your new protégè.’
‘Edmunds?’
‘Right. Edmunds.’
‘How am I supposed to know?’
‘Edmunds!’ Simmons bellowed across the busy room.
‘Work with him a lot now?’ asked Wolf quietly, unable to hide the hint of jealousy in his voice, which made Baxter smile.
‘Babysitting duty,’ she whispered. ‘He’s the transfer from Fraud, only seen a few dead bodies. He might even cry later on.’
The young man bumbling through the crowd towards them was only twenty-five years old, stick-thin and immaculately presented, apart from his scruffy strawberry-blond hair. He was holding a notebook at the ready and smiled eagerly at the chief inspector.
‘Where are forensics up to?’ asked Simmons.
Edmunds flicked back a few pages in his book.
‘Helen said that her team still haven’t found a single drop of blood anywhere in the apartment. They have confirmed that all six body parts are from different victims and were roughly amputated, probably with a hacksaw.’
‘Did Helen mention anything we didn’t already know?’ spat Simmons.
‘Actually, yes. Due to the absence of blood and lack of constric- tion of the blood vessels around the amputation wounds …’
Simmons rolled his eyes and checked his watch.
‘… we can be certain that the parts were removed post- mortem,’ finished Edmunds, looking pleased with himself.
‘That’s some fantastic police work, Edmunds,’ said Simmons sarcastically before shouting out: ‘Could someone please cancel the milk carton ad for the man missing a head? Thank you!’
Edmunds’ smile vanished. Wolf caught Simmons’ eye and smirked. They had both been on the receiving end of similar putdown
s in their time. It was all part of the training.
‘I just meant that whoever the arms and legs belonged to are definitely dead as well. They will know more once they get the body back to the lab,’ Edmunds mumbled self-consciously.
Wolf noticed the reflection of the body in the dark windows. Realising that he had not yet seen it from the front, he moved round to look.
‘What have you got, Baxter?’ asked Simmons.
‘Not a lot. Slight damage to the keyhole, possibly picked. We’ve got officers questioning the neighbours outside, but so far no one’s seen or heard a thing. Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with the electrics - every bulb in the apartment’s been removed except for the one above the victim … s, like it’s on show or something.’
‘What about you Fawkes, any ideas? Fawkes?’
Wolf was gazing up at the body’s dark-skinned face.
‘I’m sorry, are we boring you?’
‘No. Sorry. Even in this heat, this thing’s only just beginning to stink, which means the killer either murdered all six victims last night, which seems unlikely, or he’s had the bodies on ice.’
‘Agreed. We’ll get someone to look into recent break-ins at cold-storage units, supermarkets, restaurants, anywhere with an industrial-sized freezer room,’ said Simmons.
‘And see if any of the neighbours heard drilling,’ said Wolf.
‘Drilling is a reasonably common sound,’ blurted Edmunds, who regretted the outburst when three pairs of angry eyes turned on him.
‘If this is the killer’s masterpiece,’ continued Wolf, ‘there’s no way they would risk it dropping out of the ceiling and just being a pile of bits by the time we got here. Those hooks will be drilled into load-bearing metal beams. Someone should have heard it.’
Simmons nodded: ‘Baxter, get someone on it.’
‘Chief, could I borrow you a moment?’ asked Wolf as Baxter and Edmunds moved away. He pulled on a pair of disposable gloves and lifted a handful of knotted black hair away from the gruesome figure’s face. It was male. The eyes were open, the expres- sion unnervingly calm considering the victim’s clearly violent end. ‘Look familiar?’
Simmons walked round to join Wolf by the chilly window and crouched down to better examine the dark face. After a few moments, he shrugged.
‘It’s Khalid,’ said Wolf.
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Is it?’
Simmons looked up again at the lifeless face. Gradually his expression of scepticism transformed into one of deep concern.
‘Baxter!’ he shouted. ‘I need you and Adams-’
‘Edmunds.’
‘… over at Belmarsh Prison. Ask the governor to take you directly to Naguib Khalid.’
‘Khalid?’ Baxter asked in shock, involuntarily glancing at Wolf.
‘Yes, Khalid. Phone me the moment you’ve seen him alive. Go!’
Wolf looked out towards his block opposite. Many of the windows remained dark, others contained excited faces filming the spectacle below on their mobile phones, presumably hoping to capture something grisly to entertain their friends with in the morning. Apparently they were unable to see into the dimly lit murder scene that they would otherwise have had front row seats for.
Wolf was able to see into his own flat, a few windows over. In his hurry, he had left all of the lights on. He spotted a cardboard box, at the bottom of a pile, with the words ‘Trousers and Shirts’ scrawled across it. ‘Aha!’
Simmons walked back over to Wolf and rubbed his tired eyes. They stood quietly, either side of the suspended body, watching the first signs of morning pollute the dark sky. Even over the noise of the room, they could hear the peaceful sound of bird- song outside.
‘So, most disturbing thing you’ve ever seen then?’ Simmons joked wearily.
‘A close second,’ replied Wolf without taking his eyes off the growing patch of deep blue sky.
‘Second? Do I even want to know what tops this - this thing?’ Simmons took another reluctant look at the hanging collection of dismemberments.
Wolf gently tapped the figure’s outstretched right arm. The palm looked pale in comparison to the rest of the tanned skin and the perfectly manicured purple nails. Dozens of silk-like threads supported the outstretched hand and a dozen more held the extended index finger in place.
He checked that no one was listening in to their conversation and then leaned across to whisper to Simmons.
‘It’s pointing into my apartment window.’
About the Author
Daniel Cole (@DanielColeBooks) is the Sunday Times bestselling author of the Ragdoll trilogy, which has now been published in over thirty countries and is currently being adapted for TV. He has worked as a paramedic, an animal protection officer and with the RNLI lifeguards, but for the past five years has been describing himself on paperwork as a ‘full-time writer’. Mimic is his fourth novel.
He lives on the south coast of England and divides his time between the beach and the forest.
Also by Daniel Cole
Ragdoll
Hangman
Endgame
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Orion Fiction
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
Text and illustrations copyright © Daniel Cole 2021
Illustrations by Alexandra Limon
The moral right of Daniel Cole to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook) 978 1 4091 9803 1
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Contents
The Day Death Came Visiting
Thursday 2 February 1989
CHAPTER 1
Friday
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
Tuesday
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
Thursday
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
Monday
CHAPTER 11
Tuesday
CHAPTER 12
Seven years later …
Friday 15 November 1996
CHAPTER 13
Saturday
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
Sunday
CHAPTER 16
Monday
CHAPTER 17
Wednesday
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
Thursday
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
Friday
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
Monday
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
Seven months later …
Thursday 3 July 1997
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
Acknowledgements
Extract from Ragdoll
About the Author
Also by Daniel Cole
Copyright